The No Ghost Ghost Tour

I don't feel I was particularly mature as a child. Some people were. Some people say that by the time they were thirteen years old, they’d read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and were working as the senior editor on their school paper. Some people, like Judith Henry who was recently hired as my supervisor at Sloppy Joe’s Stompin’ Grounds, claim that they were born gifted and had completed 75% of their degree in marine biology before being forced to drop out when they were sixteen years old. Some people are liars. I think Judith Henry might be one of these people.

I’m picking at a dry chunk of tomato sauce that’s cemented itself to a tabletop when I realize this. For one thing, Judith can’t shut up about pyramid schemes. Her latest one involves these magic cloths that are supposed to leave no streaks on glass or hard surfaces, because they contain trace amounts of silver in them. Wanting to make a good impression, I bought seven from her last week. The cloths are absolute shit. Judith either doesn’t realize that the cloths don’t work and therefore isn’t the woman of science that she claims to be or she’s lying about the supposed virtues of the cloths, which means she can’t be trusted about anything else she said. I’ve decided that it’s the latter, because I’m the only person at the restaurant who uses them. Judith borrows white rags from the back of house staff like everyone else does. Well, everyone else but me.

I sigh and throw one of my damp Magic Silver Cleaning Cloths™ on to the table to help saturate the tomato-cement. The fabric has bits of lettuce stuck to it and a rip near the top from where I forcefully tried to remove shards of dried corn from the last table. I may as well be mopping up messes with dollar bills for all the good the purchase did me. I don’t feel like I’ve succeeded in buying myself into the queen’s good graces and she still looks at me like she suspects there’s something wrong with me.

“May I?”

I’m startled out of my thoughts by a small voice awkwardly hovering behind me. I drop the cleaning cloth into my bucket of water in response.

“Yeah. What do you need, Paula?”

Paula pulls her belt loops up towards her navel to try to hide her entire torso into her black dress pants. She’s nearly succeeding. All she needs is to get her boobs and name-tag in next.

“Table 12 said that they asked for their bill twenty five minutes ago and they said they told you they had somewhere to be,” she says, her freckled face burning cherry hot. “I told them you’re very busy and that -”

“Shit.” I’ve totally forgotten about them. No wonder Judith looks at me like she thinks I’m a few buttons short of a sewing kit. “Tell them I’ll be right there.”

I run to the POS machine and curse myself for not inputting their drink orders. To save time, I’d just made them myself and figured I’d punch them in later. It’s not even like the restaurant is that busy. I just thought I’d have time. She had a Bloody Mary and he had a … Was it a Dark and Stormy? Or did he just get an Americano? Was that the man with the pom pom on his hat who sat there before them? I fight down the rising panic and will myself to focus. I tie and retie my apron as I mentally retrace my steps. It’s no use. My brain has already conducted a memory dump.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Judith parading my way. There’s only one POS between us and it just so happens that she needs to use it every single time that I’m trying to remember an order, because of course she does.

To hell with it. I’ll tell them that the drinks are on the house because of how long I’d made them wait. With any luck, they won’t ask to speak to my manager. Since Chris isn’t in on Tuesdays, this request would automatically default to Judith. I can’t let her witness me making another mistake. If I have to hear the words “re-training” or “Mina had another oopsie” again, I might actually lose my mind. No matter what Judith thinks, I’m a perfectly competent server even if I didn’t read The Lord of the Rings before my 13th birthday.

Competent enough to be employed at a place called Sloppy Joe's Stompin’ Grounds in the glorious town of Stanmore, Washington anyways.

I drop the bill off with what I hope is an appeasing smile. “I’m so sorry. It’s one of those days. I don’t know where I leave my brain sometimes!”

The woman offers a weak laugh, but the man slams down his credit card without even looking at the contents of the bill.

“I … um. I took your drinks off for the trouble,” I stutter while I swipe the card. I gingerly place the receipt on the table for him to sign.

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” The woman says while the man scribbles a big ‘0’ where the tip option is. He tosses it into his leftover ketchup.

She’s running after him within seconds.

I can hear, “That’s the last time you convince me to go anywhere in this god forsaken town” as they tear through the door as one angry-and-agreeable unit. Like a yin-yang of customers you love and hate to see in one unfortunate match. Bells chime as the door slams behind them.

I feel sorry for her.

I wipe off and then tuck the bill into my apron with embarrassment and hope no one will see it when I do my cash out at the end of the night.

“Looks like you really pissed them off,” Judith calls from behind the bar. “What happened this time?”

“Nothing, Judith. It’s fine. He’s just in a bad mood. I think his toast was overdone,” I figure it’s okay to lie if you’re lying to a liar.

Judith gazes at me under her stick-on magnetic lashes. She touches one, securing it into place. One time, when she was telling me that I needed to get my act together and take notes on people’s orders, she’d gotten so animated that a set had flown off one of her eyeballs and she had to retrieve it out of the garnishes. She’d made me empty the entire container of maraschino cherries because it was contaminated. I remember the way that she’d spat out the word, “contaminated”. Like the state of the cherries was a reflection on my character instead of a byproduct of her ill advised Amazon purchase. She’d spent the rest of her shift with one eyeball full of lashes on and I wasn’t sure why she didn’t just remove them both. She’d looked absolutely deranged.

Today, Judith looks exhausted. Like her eyelids are barely holding the heavy lashes up. “I’ll talk to the kitchen about the toast,” she sighs. “Next time there's a problem, please come and get me. It’s my job. You need to communicate what you need from me, Mina. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the problem is.”

“Seriously, it wasn’t that big of a deal,” I say. My voice sounds thin and I can tell it sounds like I’m shrugging off the situation. It’s not that I don’t see the significance of my screw-up. I just don’t want to be having this conversation with Judith and her eyelashes.

“Do you even know who that was, Mina?”

I shake my head. “I’ve never seen them in here before.”

“That was Mike Vanderpool and his wife Sharron. They’ve just moved here and rumor has it they have a lot of money. The Stompin’ Grounds could really use customers like them. Plus, I hear he’s thinking about opening a museum.” She says the word “museum” like it’s sacred and like it’s not doomed to be filled to the roof with obituaries for all the town’s elderly and nothing else of significance. “We should be happy for people like them who want to invest in Stanmore’s future.”

I shrug. “I didn’t know, Judith. I’m sorry. Really.” For all the information she gathers on town residents, she’d be better off as a paparazzi.

She dabs at the corner of one of her eyelashes as she considers my apology. “You really need to think more, Mina. Be more present. We can’t afford to keep people on who aren’t willing to be part of the team.”

I hate it more than anything when she insinuates that I’m an airhead who couldn’t care less about my job. Plus, she’s threatening my employment based on things that just aren’t true. She’s been here for all of five minutes and I’m basically a permanent fixture at this point. I know most of the people in here.

As I take in how many seated tables are within earshot of us, I’m mortified to realize that my bottom lip is beginning to quiver in frustration. I suck it in only to feel my chin crumple. The fact that I'm about to embarrass myself by crying in front of all the customers I still have to serve makes my eyes well with even more tears, which is counter productive to the entire issue at stake. I pull off my glasses to catch the tears with my fingertips before they smear my eyeliner. I can’t serve tables in a state of devastation. I’m not Judith.

I struggle to choke out words to end the conversation. She needs to know that I’m a thinking, capable, worthwhile person. An employee to be valued.

“But I bought your stupid rags,” I sniffle angrily as a big fat teardrop rolls from my eye. When I try to catch it, my fingertips come back with the inky traces of my watered down eyeliner.

Fuck.

By the end of my shift, Judith sleuths together the truth of what occurred with my fateful encounter with the Vanderpools. Or at least some of it. When she sees the absence of drinks on the bill, the total sum of my tip from the table, and the testimony from the kitchen staff regarding the state of the toast, she decides it’s best to put my employment with Sloppy Joe’s on probation.

Two weeks to think about what teamwork looks like. Two weeks to think about how I lied to her and ultimately betrayed the whole Sloppy staff. Two weeks to consider whether my job as a server is something I really want to commit to. To add insult to injury, she also tasks me with personally delivering a Sloppy gift certificate to Mike and Sharron.

I can’t hate my life more at this moment.

When I clock out, Judith makes me leave my apron and name tag behind "just in case".

"I'll be back on the 28th," I mutter as I slip on my raincoat and place the gift certificate in my hand knit purse. At this point, I’m beyond mortification. I’m angry. It feels like I’m being bullied. I’ve seen other employees comp items before for similar situations. It’s just because Judith has taken a personal disliking to me that she’s putting me on probation. It’s absolutely not fair.

Plus, it’s not like Sloppy’s pays well enough to just unexpectedly put a staff member on probation and expect them to be okay. It’s inhumane.

“Sure,” Judith nods and goes back to counting the tills as if I'm already not her problem anymore. Her blonde hair is escaping it's ballerina bun adding to her tired and forever frazzled look.

I didn't even realize she had the power to do things like put employees on probation. Carl hired her on as a supervisor less than a month ago after Samantha stopped showing up. Sloppy Joe's only has two other servers (plus Paula as a hostess) so I feel bad for the extra shifts they're going to have to cover. There's literally nothing I can do about it thanks to Judith. I’m frustrated that Carl didn’t feel like he could promote one of his existing staff members to the position. I’ve been with the restaurant for six years. Unfortunately, Carl agrees with Judith in saying that I need to be more present. Whatever that means. Maybe I’m supposed to take a yoga class to figure it out.

It often feels like the entire town of Stanmore is against me. I can’t escape it; it’s always been this way. At the same time, the town is all I’ve ever known and I love it with my entire heart. Even Sloppy Joe’s. That’s what makes this all feel worse. I zip up my coat in indignation and make my way from the back office through the kitchen. My stomach feels like it’s being weighed down by a thousand rocks and my knees feel like they can’t support my body.

"Your boyfriend here to pick you up?" Darry, the cook, grins.

"He's not my boyfriend. He's my cousin. And no." It’s an old joke that’s been done to death, but the dishwasher and prep cook both laugh as if this is the funniest thing in the world. Standing in front of the boiling cauldron of a deep fryer with the heat of the oven sweltering around them, they look like actual demons.

Well, cousin-brother, I think.

My mother and her sister are identical twins. They do everything together. Apparently men too. That's not entirely fair of me to say though. Not entirely.

My mom (her name is Jolene) and Aunt Nina were working as lifeguards at the hotel pool back in 1990 when Larry started working security there. They both took a liking to him and started a friendly competition over who could gain the treasured title of "Larry's girlfriend" first. What a joke.

Before they knew it, both Thompson sisters had gotten knocked up by the same guy without realizing that Larry had been given the opportunity to have his cake and eat it too. That’s how my mom described it. As if her and Nina were both confettied birthday cake and Larry was some sort of bratty child who took more than his fair share and got away with it.

The situation resulted in a cousin-sibling situation between mom and Nina's offspring. Us.

It's a wonder no one had figured it out yet. Aside from a few key anatomical differences, Joel and I look like twins. Same burnt grass colored complexions. Same ski jump noses with a bump in the middle "for an extra bit of adventure" as Aunt Nina says. Like we should be pleased that a miniature skier would find our noses more fun than someone else's. I guess she figures we need to take pride where we can and we don’t have many options to choose from.

Joel and I are not the beauty queens our mothers are.

I remember sitting at a plastic play table as children giggling over crayons and what color we would invent for our eyes.

"Poop brown," Joel said.

"Glosette raisin," I countered.

"Burnt beef."

"Mud puddle."

"Beer bottle."

We never tired of the insults we threw at ourselves while our mothers were out gallivanting at one of the neighbors' and Larry was passed out on the couch downstairs. Our mothers had both sworn him off as soon as they put together what had transpired, but they kept him around for the free childcare. It was clearly top notch and all.

I throw myself into my old Buick and wonder how easy it would be to get Joel back into our old game. Maybe it would be even more fun to assign Crayola colors to his current hair. I'm looking forward to a distraction from my shitty mess of a day. Then maybe we can figure out what I'm going to do about my probation. Maybe if I can get in touch with Carl, he’ll see reason.

When I get home, the light to the basement of our bungalow is dark. Since our moms took off to Michigan together to start fresh with some sort of soap making enterprise about eight years ago, Larry showed up on the doorstep like a discarded shelter dog who couldn't beg his way into anyone else's home. We took pity on him. He's our dad, after-all. Plus, I don’t know how he’d make ends meet without us. It’s kind of sad.

I climb my way up the staircase, which is littered with old mail.

Joel is obsessed with the 90's right now and tried to replicate Leonardo Dicaprio's hair from Titanic two nights ago. However, the blond hair dye didn't take to our stubborn dark roots and he's stuck with a brassy bright orange mushroom cut that he still insists is "rad" and even better than what he was originally going for.

"The 90's called. They want their hair back," I say as I shoulder my way in the door to the living room.

"You're just jealous because you haven't found your way out of one-hairstyle-wonderland," Joel scoffs, chucking an empty Gatorade bottle in my direction.

"Where's Larry?" I say, deflecting the bottle with one knee. "And I have to keep everyone on their toes. The minute I take this ponytail out and remove my glasses, you'll all realize I've secretly been Sandra Bullock this entire time."

"Dad's at the Pickled Sailor. Where else? And you're no Sandra Bullock. Maybe Sandra D but before she was all bad ass." To save us from anyone discovering our secret and giving them further fuel to make jokes about us, I've always avoided calling Larry "dad". To make matters easier, Larry's never given any indication that he cares either way and my mom never openly admitted to anyone else who my father was.

If anyone asks, I say that my dad lives in Europe. One time, I said he died in a fire at Seaworld. It was a joke from an old episode of the IT Crowd, which is one of my favorite shows of all time. I felt bad after I said it and the other person didn’t catch the joke and acted really sympathetic and I had to pretend to be sad. Meanwhile, Larry was at home probably reading Sports Illustrated or something.

I flop down on the couch and grab the remote. Joel is rolling a cigarette on the TV table while Guy's Grocery Games blares boisterously in the background.

Before I can turn it off, he holds a hand up to stop me. He has chipped black nail polish that I wish he'd touch up. Looking at the black polish makes me cringe imagining picking off splinters of imperfect polish on my own fingernails. It reminds me of the corn shards on the tables at Sloppy Joe's.

He notices me cringing and wiggles his fingers at me. "Look at me, I'm Sandra D," he sings to reinforce his point.

I surrender the remote without a fight. "My bet's on the fried chicken lady," I say. I’ll have to tell him about my predicament after Triple G is over.

"No way. Korean burger dude for the win."

Neither of us are right. Shrimp and grits take it.

Joel stands up and his big toe surfaces out of the hole in his left sock like a shark as he yawns and stretches. "Any hot and exciting plans for tonight?" He turns, fully taking me in for the first time since I've been home. "Whoa. What happened to you? Rough shift?"

I touch my fingers to where I assume there's still smeared eyeliner that I missed when I was hastily dabbing my face with brown paper towels in the women's bathroom. "I guess you could say that."

"Go take a shower, Minny. You smell like french fries and sadness. I'll figure out dinner." Minny’s been his nickname for me since we were five.

"I won't argue with that," I say. "No tuna in baked potatoes again though." Joel loves to experiment in the kitchen based off of Guy's Grocery Game type challenges he invents for himself. Last week he decided he could only make a meal using items from the bottom two shelves of our pantry resulting in one of the most horrific meals I've ever been forced to partake in.

He laughs. "No promises, but I want to hear about your shift after."

“Sounds like a plan.”

I run my finger over the edges of a glued together jigsaw puzzle on my way downstairs to my bathroom. The puzzle depicts a golden retriever holding a bouquet of roses in its mouth. My mother had purchased the puzzle for me in ninth grade when I had asked for a dog as a reward for not failing Math that semester. We spent the next two hours completing the puzzle and weighing the pros and cons of having a dog and how it might limit us in our plans for the future. “If we have a dog, we won’t be able to go on any of those vacations we always talk about,” she’d reasoned.

We never ended up going on those vacations together, but I didn’t hold it against her. She opted to go with Aunt Nina instead and Joel and I were left to watch the house. I wonder where they are now and if she ever got a dog and if she ever thinks about the puzzle still hanging here in her stairwell. I continue on to the small bathroom I'm forced to share with Larry and hope the drain isn't clogged like it often is.

At first, they'd called us regularly on video chat. That is, until Larry moved in. Even though they've been gone since we were 23, Joel and I carry on paying rent in the same little bungalow we've always lived in. It's comfortable and easy. We see no reason to move.

Joel thinks it made them awkward to see Larry amongst us and the rest of their old things and be reminded of their mistakes so that's why we never hear from them anymore.

I'm almost glad they ghosted us. I can't imagine my mother's disappointment at her daughter being put on probation at a place with the word "sloppy" in the title. Have some self pride, I can hear her saying.

"Well, where else am I supposed to work in such a small town?" I murmur to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My bangs need trimming. They're supposed to be side swept, but they currently hang into my mascara smeared eyes like I'm afraid to see what happens in my life next.

Heaven forbid you do anything to make people think you're not a useless tit. I hear her take a drag on her menthol cigarette. She'd come down way harder on me after my high school graduation passed and it didn't seem like I was going to amount to anything. She just doesn't apply herself, Nina. Neither of them do.

Sighing, I shake the memory from my head, remove the scrunchy from my hair, and slip into the shower. I know I can do better. Joel and I both can.

When I resurface, Joel has The Smiths pouring out from his phone, which he’s placed in a soup bowl to amplify the sound. It’s a trick that I taught him and I feel proud that he still uses it.

He’s doing some kind of a bop involving bending his knees while pumping his fists forward over a steaming wok. I shimmy my slippered feet across the floor and punch my fists clockwise to the beat in an intentionally bad dance routine.

Joel throws his head back and forth while hunching his shoulders to try to make his dance worse than mine.

It’s a regular routine of ours to try to come up with the absolute worst dance and we’ve both given ourselves wicked charley horses in the past trying to outdo one another.

“Pick a spice, Minny!” he says while spinning his way back to the wok.

I select the jar of rosemary from our spice rack and hope it’s a safe enough choice for whatever Joel has created this time.

“Playing it safe, I see!” he notes.

“I’ve been scarred before. Always remember the fateful day of Coriander Christmas 2003.”

He winces. “Yeah, okay. That was pretty bad. But tonight is different. Be prepared to indulge in a Lucky Charm encrusted parmesan chicken served with a side of steamed vegetables and a rosemary infused roux.”

It could definitely be worse. I’m in the process of retrieving two yellow plates from the cupboard when we hear the front door slam. We exchange glances. It looks like my Sloppy predicament might have to wait.

Larry’s home early.